My apologies for the vagueness of subject, as the idea is fairly specific and I'm trying to do this in a relatively balanced and reasonable manner.
I'm using both Pathfinder and Starfinder to revive an old DragonStar campaign, and previously had used the mecha pilot class from BESM d20 to cover the neutral faction of shock/specialty troops for the gem dragons. I'm finding it would work better and make more sense to base the rework on the Aegis class, but what I want is to find a way to allow for an artifact or moderate to greatly powerful token/device that powers the transformation and temporarily trades a wielder's class levels for equal levels in the Aegis class. I'm wanting to set a fairly hard time limit for the effect, in addition to thematically building the effects and abilities around the respective gem dragon abilities.
The core idea, more or less, is an Aegis inspired by TekkaMan Blade, where the powers are fueled by shards of a gem dragon's molt-gems. Normally the troops serving a specific dragon have abilities based on the ones of their draconian liege and corresponding training. The players gained access to the crystals of a few troops who met unfortunate ends, and I had made them deliberately overpowered, but I am trying to bring things back in line.
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Implementing this, mechanically, would be easy enough by pre-building aegis class abilities as a template(s) and then fixing the progression of those abilities based on the level of the character who possesses the item itself.
Similar in how one would build a gestalt character (more powerful option) or a Variant Multiclasing from Pathfinder unchained (less powerful), and have the aegis "artifact" replace the feats gained from class progression.
I've made VMC options for the Aegis in my spare time (never published, not official), that follows this progression:
Aegis
A character who chooses Aegis as her secondary class gains the following secondary class features.
Psionic Focus: At 1st level, she can gain psionic focus if she could not already.
Form Astral Suit: At 3rd level, she gains the Form Astral Suit class feature. She can choose only one type of astral suit: skin, armor, juggernaut or transformed body and once chosen cannot be changed. She does not gain any free customizations.
Customizations: At 7th level, she gains customization points. She gains one half the normal customization points of an aegis of a class level equal to her character level minus 4.
Invigorating Suit: At 11th level, she gains the invigorating suit class feature.
Reconfigure: At 15th level, she gains reconfigure class feature, treating her character level -4 as her effective aegis level.
Augment Suit: At 19th level, she gains the Augment Suit class feature, treating her character level -4 as her effective aegis level.